Awesome Bonuses

As a bit of good-natured goofiness, you and your gaming group can decide to play by the Awesome Rules, which pair up with the Tongue-In-Cheek Feats. At any time, the GM can grant a bonus to an action that is deemed to be awesome by a loose consensus at the table. The vast majority of Awesome bonuses should be to PCs, but they might very occasionally go to NPCs. This bonus is minimum +2 and maximum +10, although a +10 bonus must be an act that is truly and deeply awesome on a spiritual level.

GMs have the final call on what gets an Awesome bonus, of course, but the will of the group should be taken into account. Only a gaming group that is not prone to extended bouts of rules lawyering should take on these rules, as they can create bad feelings at the gaming table if they’re taken too seriously. Some of the Tongue-In-Cheek rules, specifically the verbal feats, grant awesome bonuses as well, but remember that like bonuses don’t stack.

Here are some very general rules of thumb for the right level of bonuses:

+2: makes you grin and say “sweeeeeet”

+4: makes someone at the table cackle

+6: someone giggles through the round just waiting to see the awesome thing

+8: you feel compelled to actually applaud

+10: you’d feel comfortable telling the story to a non-gamer

Awesome bonuses can be applied cross-player. If for example the team Sneak comes up with a brilliantly ridiculous tactic for the team Blaster to employ, the Blaster might get the bonus because she’s performing the action although the Sneak gets the bragging rights.

Bogus Penalties

The opposite of an Awesome Bonus is a Bonus Penalty. These sometimes result from using certain Tongue-In-Cheek Feats.